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EDUCATIONAL FUND. 



SPEECH 



OF 



HON. JUSTIN S. MORRILL, 



OW VERMONT, 



IN THE 



SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES, 



April 26, 1876 



/ 



/ 




W J± S H UN GTON. 

1876. 



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SPEECH 

OF 

HON. JUSTIN S. MOEEILL. 



The Senate having under consideration, as in Committee of tlie "Whole, the bill 
(S. Xo. 334) to establish an educational fund and apply a portion of the proceeds of 
the public lands to public education, and to provide for the more complete endow- 
ment and support of national colleges for the advancement of scientific and in- 
dustrial education — 

Mr. MOKRILL, of Vermont, said : 

Mr. President : The measure I have called up to-day has for its 
object the aid of common schools and some further assistance to the 
national colleges. Other propositions are pending, both here and in 
the other House, in relation to this subject; but with all earnest men, 
if the leading purposes mentioned can be secured, the details will 
be of minor importance. 

I start with the proposition that all of our public lands, which are 
hereafter to be sold and are not called for as free homesteads, should 
be held exclusively for educational purposes — purposes that tower 
high above and dwarf all others. Should any exception to this rule 
ever be suggested, let it then be considered on its merits. 

SCHOOL LANDS DONATED. 

We have already given to States, without regard to their popula- 
lation, 140,000,000 acres of laud for the support of common schools, 
and eighteen of the States thus aided have a school fund of $43,868,785. 
The western or new States, as to common schools, would appear to 
have been liberally provided for. In the North and East the system 
of common schools has long held a foremost place in the hearts of the 
people, and cheerful contributions to their support by self-imposed 
taxation are made with all the regularity of the seasons. At the 
South they are far less advanced, and having no accumulated school 
funds, their people are at present unequal to the task of establishing 
and adequately maintaining such schools without some national as- 
sistance, not national control, although not unmindful of their utility 
and fully appreciating their urgent necessity. When even in Spain 
it is no longer immoral for women to know how to read, and when 
Sweden and Turkey engage in universal education, no American State 
will be found to hold back. 

All statistics are dry — interesting to few and entertaining to none — 
and some are by no means pleasant or even tolerable to contemplate : 
but legislators, like surgeons, must probe the ugliest sores, and cour- 
ageously examine even such facts as those I am reluctantly about to 
expose. 

SCHOOL POPULATION. 

Our school population of five years of age to seventeen inclusive 
is 12,055,443, or nearly one-third of our entire population. A mighty 
host, led now and controlled by us, but soon to control us and lead 
the van of civilization in the land of their fathers. Only about one- 
half of this number, or 6,545,112, attend -schools of any sort, and 



aniJong all of tlie four or five million of colored population only 160,- 
37; ) attend school, or hardly enough to furnish a silver lining to a 
clcud so dark. Five million and a half of our population cannot 
w iite and four million and a half cannot read. Of illiterate male 
auults, twenty years of age t and over, we have 1,611,213, of which 
n umber 748,470 are whites. There are thus more illiterate voters, 
aflnong either white or colored, than the usual majority of any party 
taking part at any national election. They are, therefore, the potent 
auxiliaries of all parties, the decisive make-weights, and must more 
or less control the destinies of the country. Can any happy augury 
'of ages to come he drawn from these dismal facts ? " Do men gather 
| grapes of thorns ?" 

i The liberty and equality of an immense number of illiterate people, 
' unmarked by intellectual eminence of any sort, empty of all virtuous 
| gratitude springing from the memories of childhood and the school- 
i room toward a parental government, is not such a state or condition as 
> freemen toil for, nor such as they can be expected to maintain, love, and 
'■ cherish. Along with entire liberty and equality before the law we be- 
hold among mankind the foremost and the hiudermost as well, and there 
will be distinctions and differences in both the power and the industry 
of mankind, and both of hand and brain, with no two alike among them 
all, good or bad. It should be the mission of American legislators to 
offer sure means for the greatest possible development of this power 
and industry, and to diminish inequality by leveling upward and not 
downward. Thus only shall we be able to prove that republican in- 
stitutions, quick to perceive and to foster the most exalted personal 
merits and qualifications, will neither dwarf the state nor the people. 
Thus only shall we show that our boasted equality is not inferiority 
to everybody else. 

The several States are greatly interested in the removal of the deep- 
seated illiteracy to which I have referred, but by no means exclu- 
sively, as the interest of the General Government covers the same ter- 
ritory and embraces all and the same voters. The election of Presi- 
dent of the United States and of members of Congress cannot be 
reckoned as less grave and important work than that of State gov- 
ernors and Legislatures. The parts are not greater than the whole. 

Through the latest action of the people upon the national Consti- 
tution we have bestowed universal suffrage upon our fellow-citizens 
in all of the States. The nation is primarily responsible for this action, 
and, while accepting of its advantages, must shield itself as well as 
the States from the resulting possible perils. The increased magni- 
tude of the burden which has been imposed by the sovereign will of 
the nation manifestly ought to be borne by the nation. Universal 
suffrage must be made a blessing and an honor to our country, not a 
curse to the citizen, nor to the States and the nation. Every one of 
our citizens has been crowned with equal power in the guidance of 
national and State affairs ; but they have thus far had too little of 
our aid to fit them even to guide themselves. Many of the States 
resolutely assume their full share of the great responsibility, and raise 
by taxation and expend nearly $100,000,000 annually for common 
schools; and, when so much more is obviously required, shall the 
General Government look on with total indifference, contributing 
nothing ? 

CONSTITUTIONAL POWER. 

Not only is the^General Government profoundly interested in the 
enlightened and virtuous character of our whole people, but it has the 
exclusive power touching the disposal of the public lands, the largest 



and most appropriate educational resource by which that character 
has heen and may be elevated and its deficiencies remedied. The 
language of the Constitution is : 

The Congress shall have the power to dispose of and make all needful rules and 
regulations respecting the^ territory or other property belonging to the United 

bvates. 

No grant of power could be more ample, none more explicit, and it 
must be exercised. It should not sleep and it cannot be delegated to 
other parties. Congress itself must dispose of the lauds and make 
such rules and regulations as it chooses. If it appears needful and 
proper to dispose of this property for educational purposes, the noblest 
of all purposes, the power of Congress is supreme, and it can and ought 
so to ordain. Even if the pathway were less obvious, we have an un- 
erring guid e-board in the great ordinance of 1787 , reflecting so much 
rronror upon our ancestors, which not only provided the flaming sword 
to keejj the great West free from " slavery and involuntary servitude," 
but also proclaimed this educational purpose in the strongest and 
most unequivocal terms, as will be found in one of its prominent ar- 
ticles, namely: 

Art. 3. Eeligion. morality, and knowledge heiiig necessary to good government 
and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever he 
encouraged. 

These terms, made and declared at the time of the cession of the 
lands as "a compact between the original States," are mandatory as 
to our duty — national duty — in the premises. " Schools and the means 
of education shall forever be encouraged," not by States alone but by 
this national fund. The logical concomitants of religion, morality 
and good government, could not otherwise be secured. We must ad- 
here for all time to this compact, or be justly charged with a plain 
and palpable breach of a sacred trust. 

The Government promised what it would do when it took charge 
of the land fund, and that promise cannot be avoided by the cranky 
plea that the Government has nothing to do with education. Amer- 
ican citizens are not dependent paupers, and it is no humiliation for 
them, in spite of all cant phrases, to ask for what is their due. They 
form a great co-partnership, having, among other privileges, an equal 
interest in the education and perfection of all its members, and the 
poorest member is entitled to something better than his unaided re- 
sources might otherwise have afforded. If this were not true the as- 
sociation would be a failure, and, after all, the best form of govern- 
ment, controlled by illiterate bunglers, might prove to be the worst. 
The great crises of our so-called political experiment have passed 
away. Even the greed of territorial acquisitions and the passion to 
extend our rule over foreigners, the terrible fanaticism of republics, 
it is to be hoped has been satiated, and, with ample resources for 
prosperous trade and commercial independence, it now remains to us 
as our chiefest concern to establish a more solid basis of hope for our 
future career through a broader and higher education, adapted to the 
genius and taste of the American people. 

If Congress has a binding duty to perform relative to education — 
next to religion the highest concern of mankind — it has also a duty 
scarcely inferior in its scope as to the discharge of an important trust, 
no less than that of the disposal of the residue of our whole public 
domain, in such manner as will best promote the present and future 
welfare, moral and material, of a great, enterprising, and exacting 
people, and in strict accordance with the terms of our compact. 



6 

Is it not a providential conjuncture that, while this moral exigency- 
looms up before us, a national resource of ample dimensions is also 
waiting as a remedy for this very exigency — a resource unexhausted 
even by unthrifty husbandry, and which the common voice of the 
country will agree by acclamation should not be disi30sed of without 
a full equivalent, nor for any purpose less than the most sacred ? The 
high duty of ownership, the great trust of the original States, long 
swaying to and fro, can now be fully, fittingly, and nobly discharged. 

The present depleted and unsatisfactory financial condition of 
many of the Southern States, however substantial the latent elements 
of their future prosperity may be, needs neither proof nor illustration. 
None of us can remain unmindful of their wants, and Congress will 
in any constitutional manner move with alacrity to their relief when 
it can be done without detriment to the Republic, as here it may be, 
and done patriotically, with national as well as local advantage. 
These States need all the aid we can properly grant for both common 
schools and colleges, and they will still have to rely, in the race with 
their sister States and the world, largely upon their own efforts and 
enthusiasm to place themselves on the road to equal rank with those 
where educational institutions are more deeply rooted and where 
they have already given promise of good and abundant fruit. 

EDUCATION THE EIGHT OF AMERICANS. 

But while general education must be recognized as the common 
outfit of all men and the indisputable right of Americans, special and 
a more comprehensive education has become more than ever neces- 
sary to qualify each citizen for his own peculiar duties and position 
in life. Our latest civilization and the division of labor have opened 
new destinies and greater fortunes to mankind by wondrously multi- 
plying the more productive and more remunerative occupations in 
modern society. New educational wants, keeping pace with a cen- 
tury and a half of marked original research, have been rapidly created, 
and nowhere perhaps more conspicuously than in the United States. 
The older colleges and universities have served well and, although 
the relative value of studies is not settled, with the modifications go- 
ing on, will serve well to continue the eminence accorded to their sys- 
tem of literary education for those who are to obtain subsequent 
professional or special training ; yet, as the sole reliance and last re- 
sort of the whole people, they are not only unequally distributed, but 
they have been hitherto either unable or unwilling to indulge much 
curiosity for any explorations outside of moss-covered traditions, and 
have given too little prominence to such scientific studies as might 
be most useful to the largest numbers, and strangely because of an 
obsolete theory that such would be accounted as of some use in prac- 
tical life. A still more serious objection lies in the fact that the usual 
college course now costs triple the sum required fifty years ago. This 
objection is a growing one and should be overcome by larger public 
patronage or be checked by wholesome competition. The ladders by 
which boys climb from common schools to a college education should, 
not be placed beyond the reach of the common people. 

There is, therefore, a boundless field to be occupied by colleges which 
can and will give to students nowhere else provided for a greater 
proportion of time to the learning, which is not only disciplinary, but 
really valuable for its own sake and. helpful as some part of the founda- 
tion to a chosen sphere in the affairs of a busy world. The tardy pro- 
cess of self -culture, by which men of mark have sometimes made their 
way, and which to large numbers, postponed until maturity points 



to other tasks, is the only process available, should be aided at the 
earliest moment by colleges that "will enable a larger portion of those 
who cannot live without earning their living to bring forth and tem- 
per all the advantages of genius and talent with which by nature 
they have been endowed. Uncomputed numbers, with unknown and 
uncomputed power, ought not to be suffered so largely to run to waste. 
We are often sad to think of the greater possibilities which even men 
not destitute of all fame have barely missed through some slight mis- 
chance or short-coming, but we rarely mourn and ponder over the 
wide possibilities of the unknown multitude fated to live in the shade 
without culture or sunshine and who fall at last, like crowded trees 
in the unvisited forest, with all their latent strength and beauty to 
slumber forever with the moldering past. Among our people there 
is much of this valuable timber that a Republic promising so grandly 
as to race, position, and period cannot afford to leave in the back- 
ground to utter waste. No ; each one is — 

A living thing, 
Produced too slowly ever to decay ; 
Of form and aspect too magnificent 
To be destroyed. 

DISCOXTENT OF LABORIXG-MEX. 

Throughout the world, not excelling our own country, there is a 
deeply-seated feeling of discontent among laboring-men, not that they 
must labor, for that they are not unwilling, but that so large a share of 
labor is wholly rude, unlettered, and so rarely loved or respected. Ne- 
cessity binds them to an unending routine, often transmitted from one 
unskilled generation *o the next, with no training and no guidance 
up the steep ascent to a higher plane of more congenial toil and to a 
better intellectual and social life. They feel that much of the exist- 
ing intellectual superiority with which they have to compete is not 
entirely natural, but largely artificial, or only the usual and inevit- 
able advantage bestowed by schools and colleges, which, as they be- 
lieve, ought to embrace a broader field to which they might furnish a 
much larger proportion of recruits and by which they could make their 
leisure hours too precious to be spent in idle dissipation. Something 
of the legitimate distinction conferred by human approbation, now 
and then a prize among so many blanks, even workingmen, the most 
industrious and upright, have a laudable ambition to achieve, or to 
have their children achieve, as they might, if the gate-ways of toil 
bore not too generally that fearful motto, " All hope abandon, ye who 
enter here." 

Pent-up discontent in worn and weary hearts is not less explosive 
than pent-up steam. Among the stern wrestlers with the world there 
are many striving for the mastery of the bottom knowledge and 
skill — now more than ever necessary— to do more and better work, 
and thereby to obtain not only somewhat greater pecuniary rewards 
but such honors as they may fairly earn ; not specially political hon- 
ors, for they know as well as those who have tasted such that they 
are but ashes in the mouths of even the most voracious. Let them 
be qualified for any service, but above the need of political employ- 
ment. A slight difference of earning-power often determines human 
happiness or human misery. Some opportunity for improvement, 
for that training which the wisest of men are eager to obtain and find 
indispensable must be conceded and tendered to this vast human 
force, which, if not wisely directed, may be mischievously directed, 
or, if not directed by those to whom it belongs, it will be directed by 
demagogues to whom it ought not to belong and whose trade ought 



8 

not to "be encouraged. The ever-active toilers, pursuing their voca- 
tions with an absenteeism of the heart, are visibly restless under 
what seems to them the unescapable servitude of their whole class. 
Each one harbors Shakspeare's mistaken conviction: 

Thence comes it that my name receives a brand, 
And almost thence my nature is subdued 
To what it works in, like the dyer's hand. 

An opportunity only is wanted by good men to acquire such quali- 
fications as will afford through diligent effort some hope of creditable 
eminence even while earning their daily bread or some chance to 
make laborious employments here and there blaze with a few exam- 
ples of their own shining lights, and possibly to perpetuate the mem- 
ory of genius, enterprise, and greatness based upon honest industry 
and worthy manhood. No one here feels that poverty is a disgrace, 
but the disgrace arises when there is no effort by industry and edu- 
cation to escape from it. Our Government, the United States, pro- 
voking so much attention as it does in the history of the world by 
its unexampled growth, can afford neither cowardice nor indolence, 
and should awake to its grave responsibilities by being foremost to 
respond to educational demands so earnest, so reasonable, and so 
easily satisfied. 

NATIONAL CHARACTER. 

Some learned sophists have claimed that the National Government 
is not responsible for the national character, that it has no personality, 
and no duties as to moral elevation or as to education of any kind ; 
and they have also even averred that education can give no guarantee 
to republican institutions. This is an extreme enunciation of the 
doctrine of nihilism or of the governmental do-nothing policy, and it 
follows that the Government should have no conscience, no sense of 
honor, and be as unmindful of itself as the thistle-blow, when wafted 
hither and 'thither by whatever wiody currents chance to prevail, 
with no power of will to choose whether to grow or to perish by the 
way-side, and if by chance to grow, with no power to propagate any- 
thing but thistles. The denial of governmental personality is the 
disease of atheism, which covets all the sorrows but none of the joys 
or hopes of life, and is compatible only with a ruling despotism. 

But this doctrine is alien to the fundamental idea of our form of 
government and wide away from the mile-stones which mark its path- 
way from the start. It was intended that our Government should 
have special regard to its own character, should exhibit the foresight 
and statesmanship of the people, and, finally, that it should live and 
not die. It was never intended that its sole functions should be to 
punish crime, keep the peace, collect taxes, and put down rebellion, 
and after that to let the world slide. Though we have freedom, 
wealth, and courage, and have not character, have not virtue and 
knowledge, we are nothing — less than sounding brass or a tinkling 
cymbal. 

Long ago that sturdy puritanic republican, John Milton, set forth 
the doctrine, by no means alien to our own era, that " a common- 
wealth ought to be but as one huge Christian personage, one mighty 
growth and stature of an honest man." Again he declared, that "to 
make the people fitted to govern will be to mend our corrupt and 
faulty education." The formula of John Locke was that " the end 
of government was the good of mankind." These were some of the 
principles that guided the robust founders of our own Republic. In the 
very heart and core of our, institutions all the virtues were to find a 
home. The people here ordained and established a government for 



9 

the people ; tlieir obedience under it was to be obedience to them- 
selves ; and tkey have always felt and always will feel that to it at- 
taches some responsibility for their own national character and that 
of their posterity. They strove here in the New World to exalt the 
race of mankind and to build up model institutions. The good of 
the governed, in the highest political sense of perennial and perfect 
health, was the chief object, and that could not be secured by con- 
stitutional indifference to their virtue and their moral and intellect- 
ual elevation. The national character was not to be exalted by faith 
without works, but by ideas and sentiments springing from a broader 
education, which inspire manly efforts, and fill and fructify youthful 
minds. 

The States, it is true,Vhave much to do, but the national Govern- 
ment, superior in its higher nature and wider scope, has more impor- 
tant work to do, having given to each State the guarantee of a repub- 
lican form of government, a guarantee impossible of fulfillment, as our 
wisest men have never denied, without general and thorough educa- 
tion. Rich universities abroad, if not at home, possibly with a mini- 
hiuin of outspoken partiality to republican institutions and a Cicero- 
nian contempt for labor,* may be supported by the voluntary aid of 
wealth or by the generosity of men flickering in their exit from the 
world, but such aid rarely steps forth to lift up the masses, whose ed- 
ucation has never been supported by spontaneous and continued 
charity, and can only be firmly supported under the auspices and di- 
rect inspiration of government. The national Government, however, 
is not here called upon to do much, but its flag should march at the 
head of the great uplifting procession, and cannot afford to hide away 
in cheap non-committalism when the dignity and character if not the 
future glory of its citizens are dependent upon its leadership. 

To support the character of our national Government and its honor 
every citizen willingly stands ready to sacrifice not only property 
but life itself; and shall it be said for this the Government is to do 
nothing in return ? Are there no reciprocal duties ? Stripped of per- 
sonality, character, dignity, virtue, and, moral elevation as a basis of 
governmental duties, what would there be left to love, or what that 
patriotism would rush to defend ? What that a Christian would pray 
might be immortal? The character of a nation clearly dees not al- 
together depend upon its geology, climate, soil, oysters, and terrapins, 
but very much upon its governmental and educational institutions 
and upon that growth of manhood which is their ripened product. 
Great living may be very well, but a great life is far better. No nation 
is more sensitive to the estimate of others than the American people. 

Nor is it enough that " the upper ten thousand" of cities have cul- 
ture and that each rural village has its luminous ring of the educated 
minister, lawyer, and doctor. The magic circle should be more broad- 
ly expanded and include the whole country instead of scattered mi- 
croscopic patches. Under a free government the nation acquires rank, 
not by a few daintily-polished individuals, the bell-wethers of a feeble 
flock, but by the intelligence and majesty of the entire community ; 
not by one stone superbly cut, but by the proportions and grandeur of 
the completed edifice. 

THE COLORED RACE. 

But it maybe objected that this policy includes all, without regard 
to race or color ; and why not ? Are we to praise freedom and shirk 

* " The occupations of all artisans," says Cicero, " are base, and the shop can have 
nothing of the respectable." 



10 

the duty of mailing it better than slavery ? Having emancipated a 
whole race, shall it he said there our duty ends, leaving the race as 
cumherers of the ground, to live or to wilt and perish, as the case 
may he ? They are members of the American family — forever in 
sight — and their advancement concerns us all. While swiftly forget- 
ting all they ever knew as slaves, shall they have no opportunity to 
learn anything as freemen ? They are to be the sources of great 
strength or of great weakness, of glory or shame. " It is impossi- 
ble," says a recent English writer, "that the knowledge which is 
power in one race can be absolutely impotent in another." This ap- 
pears to me to be a truth, pertinent to us and our times, which we 
shall do well to consider. Surely the American Congress will not 
emulate the courtly cruelty of the Duke of Alva, that minion of 
Philip II, who promised to some prisoners life, bnt, when they "peti- 
tioned for food, replied that " he would grant them life but no meat." 
Shall we grant liberty and then refuse it all nourishment ? 

ECONOMY. 

I well know that the present is a time when, in the interest of* 
sound economy, all worthless schemes, every doubtful expenditure, 
all windy humbugs, as well as all sinecures, should be — will be — piti- 
lessly slaughtered, and I mean to contribute, as I trust I have never 
failed to do, my full share of work to that kind of slaughter ; but un- 
wise, bat-eyed economy may often be actual prodigality or the sav- 
ing of seed-corn at the expense of the whole crop ; and it would be a 
portentous omen to the future destinies of oar country if aid and en- 
couragement to learning and science, to schools and colleges, should 
be doomed to crucifixion in such disreputable company. Upon the 
broadest principles of the purest and most far-reaching economy, the 
friends of the present bill base its highest claims to public favor, and 
it cannot be put down by a hue and cry raised to crush measures of a 
far different character, with which it has neither kinship nor affinity. 

It may not improperly be claimed that this measure really plants 
the seeds of a future harvest of revenue and will in the end not only 
augment the productions of industry and increase the wealth of the 
country, but that it will thereby add considerably to the receipts of 
the Treasury, which always rise or fall with the general prosperity ; 
and beyond all this, so far as a broader education rapidly tends to 
multiply the number of letter- writers, or promotes the interchange 
of ideas and courtesies, as well as of commodities, it may be expected 
to contribute something toward lifting up even the Post-Office De- 
partment nearer to a self-supporting condition. The first year of 
common schools in Great Britain increased their postal revenue over 
$3,000,000. It is then by no means fanciful dreaming to claim this 
school and college bill incidentally as a revenue measure, and that 
its passage will ultimately actually increase the revenues of the 
country. 

In every great enterprise it is true we must consider what we are 
to lose as well as what we are to gain. By the proposed measure of 
further aid to national colleges and a very substantial contribution 
to common schools, we shall gradually part with our title to the own- 
ership of a limited quantity of land — small in comparison with the 
bulk of our possessions — from which the policy of acquiring ordinary 
revenue long ago practically ceased. Broad acres we shall still offer 
free to all who ask for homes. But for revenue purposes the public 
lands can now furnish no regular basis, and their value ought to be 
held as far too precious to be bartered for merely moneyed equivalents 
that must be swallowed up at once in ordinary expenditures. 



11 

On the other side, the gain here proposed to be slowly derived from 
any sales of these lands will be a perpetual educational fund, retained 
in the custody of the nation and kept, like the heat of the summer 
sun, forever undiminished, while barely the interest thereon will be 
annually expended by each State for the culture and enlightenment 
of all their coming generations. 

By this fund we first promote primary education by aiding State 
systems of common schools, and then we are to have institutions of 
learning — at least one college — in every State, planted on foundations 
not very magnificent, it is true, but as broad and firm as the founda- 
tions of the Government itself, by which a more complete education 
in every portion of the Union will be brought within the reach of 
larger numbers — too poor to seek it in any modern Athens or Rome — 
and to whom it will give that " crown and scepter " which thorough 
education always gives, but gives, alas ! to too few. Surely, what we 
are to gain, as indicated even by this tame and stinted recital, is far 
more precious, far more considerable, than what we are to lose. In 
fact, it is an error to assume that we are to lose anything when we 
rescue and preserve for ages that which might otherwise in some 
earlier or later flood of congressional grants disappear altogether, 
leaving no enduring trace behind except the record of sundry petty 
schemes with the " hungry edge " of local appetite for such schemes 
sharpened rather than satisfied. 

But even the relatively insignificant portion of the public domain 
which can now under any circumstances be appropriated for the pur- 
poses here indicated will in many ways contribute to the strength and 
glory of our country. It will be the disposal «£ the surplus part of the 
national farm — of a few back lots — for the permanent improvement 
of the remainder, and for increasing the skill and all the forces of 
those charged with its future ownership and productive development. 

RAILROADS. 

It may be that some friends of further subsidies to railroads would 
still prefer such projects to any policy of education. It is apparent 
that the whole world have invested too lavishly in railroads, we more 
than any others,, for the interest of the present generation, however 
beneficial the investments may or may not prove hereafter. Without 
any national system in the location, but a "mighty maze" of discord- 
ant lines, it is not strange that an immense capital has been sunk. 
From the present temper of the people, it may be assumed that land 
subsidies have accomplished all they can accomplish and have spent 
their force. We have donated to railroads 210,756,807 acres of land, 
which at double the minimum price, though often fetching much more, 
will amount to $526,892,017. Will not that suffice f I am sometimes 
forcibly reminded of the "fable of the lion and other beasts hunt- 
ing," where it is shown how the lion takes "the lion's share;" having 
divided the prey into three parts, appropriating the first to himself 
as king, the second to himself for his share in the chase, and defying 
anybody to lay hand on the third. Certainly the railroads appear to 
have taken "the lion's share," having divided the prey and appro- 
priating the first part as king, the second to themselves as their share 
in the chase, and now will they defy anybody to lay hand on the 
third? We shall see. 

MILITARY AND NAVAL SCHOOLS. 

Very early the national Government founded the Military Academy, 
and subsequently the Naval School. This was done in harmony with 
the statesmanship of past ages, and in accordance with modern ex- 



12 

amples, to make the most of the human fighting force of nations. 
Nothing was to he spared necessary to educate and train men in the 
most skillful methods of destroying their enemies. A previous na- 
tional declaration of the purpose, it is understood, makes wholesale 
manslaughter a glorious achievement. Even an education pointing 
to such an end as this, embracing a considerable share of science, with 
the modern languages and much of the martial and naval history and 
philosophy of mankind, as well as the polish of methodical discipline, 
has given a certain degree of superiority to those entitled to wear the 
uniform of their class. Like ancient knights, they outranked the 
common people, who seemed to shrivel up in their presence, and to 
this day, of ten without the merit of heroic services, they are accorded 
precedence over the most distinguished civilians, with only the ora- 
torical exceptions, perhaps, of " bright particular stars " among the 
legal profession. 

Would this be so if the great masses of the people, engaged for life 
in pursuits for the support -of themselves and the institutions of hu- 
man government and the adornment of Christian society, received 
that training of the schools which favors the arts of peace and the 
knowledge and skill which produces not only men of the highest value 
to themselves and the world, but which will hasteu on the millennium 
of national arbitrations, instead of more and more sad and bloody pages 
of human history ? 

It is not any reproach that military and naval officers master their 
professions in schools supported by the Government, unless it is done 
with no intent to render any service therefor, or because the educa- 
tion is esteemed better than is to be found elsewhere, giving, as it 
really does, a high standard of duty, order, and military honor ; but 
it is a reproach that governmental duties there stop. The defenders 
of the country are vastly important, in war indispensable ; so are all 
whom they defend, or defenders would not be required. And while the 
latter are educated and then maintained through life, the former, by 
whose constant toil not only soldiers and sailors are maintained but 
the Government itself, ought not to be dismissed as below the mili- 
tary standard in height without some provision that they too may have 
the proper educational armor to become masters in their own battle- 
fields of industry. 

While the world is in a transition stat'e and all lands do not yet rest 
from war, the art cannot be wholly neglected, inasmuch as it is still 
true that " one sword keeps another in its scabbard," and therefore 
something of military science and discipline as an incident of these 
national colleges is provided for and will be obtained by all of their 
students, supplying in any emergency to eachJState a valuable aggre- 
gate of available knowledge, and that without any charge to the Na- 
tional Government. 

WHAT THE NATIONAL COLLEGES HAVE DONE. 

But the pertinent inquiry may be made, what have the colleges, 
started under the act of 1862, done that gives room to hope for their 
success or that entitles them to further favor ? It maybe too early to 
seek a full answer to this question, but there is no reason why it 
should be evaded. To call them a failure " would be," as the presi- 
dent of Dartmouth College lately said to me, " as absurd as to call 
the day a failure when we had seen but half an hour of it." It 
is unwise to despise small ^beginnings, for they often forerun great 
things. It will at once be noted that nearly one-third of these col- 
leges have not yet had time to get into working order, but by the 



13 

latest reports which I have examined twenty-eight of them, while 
yet in the cradle of their existence, had 3,842 students with 356 in- 
structors, being an average of 137 students and 12.7 instructors re- 
spectively. Compare this with the 323 older institutions, the growth 
of a century, which in 1673 had no more than 25,010 students and 
3,108 instructors, or only an average of 77 students and 9.6 instruct- 
ors respectively. Surely these facts, so early developed as budding 
evidences of honor and usefulness, wi?l put to flight any doubts as 
to the amount of work being done or as to the share of public con- 
sideration they are receiving, and the national colleges may now fear- 
lessly challenge the support of the most cautious legislators. Upheld 
by the industrial classes as well as by nearly all of the scientific men 
of the country, as they are and will be, their success cannot be doubt- 
ful; and let me ask for what other 15,000,000 million acres of public 
land has the Government so much to show ? 

These colleges are often called "agricultural colleges," perhaps be- 
cause here for the first time agriculture obtained equal favor, or even 
any attention, or because several States have given that name to their 
institutions as an honorable distinction, or possibly the term may be 
sometimes derisively applied, as though it were an absurdity to expect 
any growth of science and learning from an agricultural college ; but 
while it is true that all sciences related to agriculture are to be in- 
cluded and must be and are taught in these national institutions, 
though not to so great an extent as it is to be hoped they yet will be, 
£ there is nothing excluded touching any other industrial, mechanical, 
or even classical interests. The charter is broad, covering no sham, 
no inferior work, and if it had been made narrower, these colleges 
would not only have been less useful but even more exposed to nar- 
row and jealous criticism, and certainly would not have escaped the 
sneers of those who flout the name of agricultural colleges as a dam- 
aging epithet or as a brand of reproach.^ Ignorantly they have possi- 
bly bestowed a watch-word of talismanic power which may both 
plague and shame the inventors. The cli\bs of jealousy and passion 
do not always remain in the hands of those who first bring them into 
the conflict. 

By the law of 1862 the several States were to establish at least one 
college, and, being unrestricted, they could rightfully bestow such 
names upon their respective colleges as they pleased, so long as they 
brought the character of the institutions within the terms prescribed 
by the act of Congress. Is it not puerile to criticise the public 
taste about mere names ? A college is not specially a " union college" 
because it has been so named, nor is a college merely a town college, 
though bearing the name of some town. 

CNot less unreasonable is it to expect that all graduates of the na- 
tional colleges must become agriculturists and forever follow the 
plow. They have the right to do that or anything else they choose ; 
to be artists, mechanics, surveyors, merchants, teachers, lawyers, doc- 
tors, or ministers ; but whatsoever they are, they will be better for 
being thoroughly and scientifically equipped, and they will also be 
better able to tender more or less valuable aid to all branches of in- 
dustry, despising none. I 

The total number of professional men in the United States educated 
or who should have been educated at classical colleges is only 146,993,* 
while agriculturists are numbered by millions and consequently 
should hold, as they do, prominent privileges in the national colleges; 

* Lawyers, 40,736; clergymen, 43,874; physicians and snrsreons, 62,383; total' 
146,993. 



) 



14 

but they neither ask nor hold any exclusive privileges. All the use- 
ful arts, all mechanical and industrial employments, are hopefully 
recognized and offered an impartial support. {Classical studies are by 
no means ignored, hut are provided for all those who have time to 
acquire them and who may have occasion for their future display, 
and for those who are free from care and solicitude as to present and 
future maintenance.^ Scientific knowledge, however, in spite of all 
doubts, is as sublime and as beautiful as any other — so thought Ba- 
con and Newton and so thought Franklin and Agassiz — and. being 
also both commonly and grandly useful it here has a leading position, 
and what are usually esteemed as elegant and ornamental courses of 
study, asked for by, the xn:esent limited class of the so-called learned 
professions and by gentlemen of leisure, come in as of "secondary im- 
portance, as they must come, on the field and in the work-shop, in 
the counting-room and in the factory. 

It is proposed to offer the means for a generous and sound educa- 
tion, not without a body for its feathers and with a steady leaning 
toward such branches as will assist young men in their work when 
they reach their ultimate field of duty and prevent them from for- 
saking that field because of its monotony or because of its exclusion 
from all the graces and attractions of the schools. Is it in vain to 
seek to embellish the daily life of -physical labor with something of 
the luster of intellectual discipline ? The brain is certainly not to be 
wholly neglected because it clings to such home-bred allies as bone 
and muscle, which do more and far better work when wisely guided 
by a well-trained head. 

I find an account of fifteen farms attached to the national colleges, 
which average three hundred and fifty acres each, and they are rapidly 
getting to be farms of model excellence, where many of the most val- 
uable experiments are made and where, to some extent, the best 
breeds of stock are constantly exhibited. What is clone is not hid under 
a bushel. These farms with stock and tools are expensive, and some 
of the colleges are yet without the requisite funds to secure or to 
maintain them. Several of the States have already supplied these 
deficiencies. The aid here proposed would enable all to move more 
satisfactorily in this direction, while it would furnish resources for 
more efficient work in many other respects. 

If the number of college students proposing to be farmers is less 
than it should be, so much the more need is there of creating and 
cultivating a taste in that direction, and it must never be forgotten 
that lack of means for long terms of study makes all colleges almost 
inaccessible to the vast majority of mankind. It requires also some 
intrepidity, even for boys inured to labor, to avow that they are pre- 
paring to work with their hands, even with skilled hands, as well as 
with brains, among associates many of whom are rather too proudly 
setting out to work and shine only with the latter ; but the number 
attending the national colleges with such earnest purposes is much, 
larger than is supposed or than make any proclamation of their in- 
tentions in advance, and the facilities for obtaining all the present 
available theoretical and technical knowledge of agricultural science 
has been in most cases, and will be in all, liberally provided. 

According to the late census our entire male population, ten years 
old and over, was 14,258,866, and 5,525,503 of these were engaged in 
agriculture, besides 400,000 females so engaged. Almost one-half of 
our whole population, it thus appears, are devoted to agriculture. 
They have, therefore, in numbers alone paramount claims to consid- 
eration, and beyond such claims there underlies the vital problem of 



15 



a future supply of cheap food, upon the abundance of which hinge 
the growth and maintenance of a great people with great and con- 
stantly expanding wants. No extent of land can he sufficient with- 
out a sufficiency of competent and willing lahor. The vocation of 
farming and husbandry must be made both attractive and lucrative, 
or it will be, as it has been, renounced at every decade by an increas- 
ing number of deserters. The pursuit of money-getting alone — all- 
pervading as the passion may be — is unsatisfactory, and those who 
furnish food for the whole body of mankind may reasonably demand 
some share of mental sustenance or at least may demand the crumbs 
which drop from the tables of the learned. 

THE PKODUCTIVE POWER OF FARMS DECREASING. 

It is also a fact well ascertained that as a whole our soil is being 
rapidly reduced in its productive power. I have heretofore called at- 
tention to this fact as exhibited in every census return since 1840. 
Our husbandry appears to be based upon the wants of the nineteenth 
century alone and refuses to speculate on the wants of the twentieth. 
Present profits, not the increased and fixed value of farms, absorb at- 
tention. By our too general habit of uncompensated cropping it is 
plain that we are steadily exhausting the fertility of the land in the 
new as well as the older States. The wheat region retreats west-, 
wardly as relentlessly as the inarch of some fearful epidemic ; in the 
land of the Puritans they are almost as dependent for corn as they 
were in the days of Miles Standish, when Indians furnished a scant 
"supply ; and now the grasshopper plague seems on the wing chal- 
lenging even the westward empire of the farmer. 

The census of 1870, noth with standing the evidences of a rapid de- 
velopment of wealth and population, discloses some unwelcome facts. 
With a much larger acreage and millions more of population, as com- 
pared with 1860, there was only a small gain in wheat, oats, butter, 
and potatoes, while there was an absolute diminution, incredible as it 
may appear, of cattle, swine, corn, rye, rice, tobacco, cotton, cheese, 
sugar, and molasses. * Improved implements now enable farmers to 
cultivate double the quantity of land cultivated by their fathers, one 
man with the reaper doing the work of ten men, and thereby securing 
with less laborers greater present profits ; but by this grasping, broad- 
gauged husbandry, by too infrequent rotation of crops, by too little 
reliance upon manual labor and home-made manure, and the dire ex- 
haustion which follows the exportation of cereal crops, they also se- 
cure a larger deterioration of the soil, and the general crop per acie 



*United States census returns. 



Nea t cattle 

Swine 

Rye bush 

Corn bush 

Hice .' lbs 

Tobacco lbs 

Cheese lbs 

Cotton bales 

Sugar hhds. 

Sugar, maple lbs 

Molasses, maple galls 

Molasses, cane galls 




28, 967, 

33, 512, 

21, 101, 

838, 792, 

187, 167, 

434, 209, 

103, 663, 

5, 387, 

230. 

40, 120, 

1, 597, 

14,963, 



028 
867 
380 
742 
032 
461 
927 
052 
982 
205 
589 
996 



28, 
25, 
16, 

760, 
73, 

202, 

53, 

3, 

28, 
0, 



074, 582 
134, 569 
918, 795 
944, 549 
635, 021 
735, 341 
492, 153 
011. 996 
87, 043 
443, 645 
921, 057 
593, 323 



16 

year by year grows perceptibly less. Our fast and thoughtless ma- 
chine-farrniug makes us forget that the earth cau ever grow old and 
unfruitful. 

Surely it will not be improper to give some heed to the lesson brought 
to our notice by such ominous and irrefutable facts. The only amend- 
ment possible is through a better and more scientific treatment of the 
soil as well as a higher and better treatment of those who are to be 
its future proprietors. Is there any mode by which that result can be 
more generally and successfully promoted than through the establish- 
ment of these national colleges ? Certainly none are offered, none are 
visible, at home or abroad. 

Let it be borne in mind that the products of farms depend not more 
upon their fertility than upon the intelligence of their occupants. 
Ireland is a land of great fertility, but has not been overstocked with 
schools; while Scotland is far less fertile, and has a much rougher 
climate, but it has long been famed for the universality of its schools. 
The result is that Ireland has not been free from famine, and her pop- 
ulation departs in droves to other lands ; while in Scotland, 

O'er a' the ills o' life victorious — 

you not only cannot starve a Scotchman, but the population thrive by 
intelligent industry and is constantly on the increase. 

Notwithstanding the immense interest in farms and farmers, the 
General Government, possibly still tbe largest land-holder of the 
world, has yet done little, very little, for agriculture, even less than 
many European governments. Only 15,000,000 acres, all told, have 
been granted under the land grant to the national colleges of 1862, 
and this covers all that has been done in behalf of a higher education, 
not only for the millions engaged in agriculture, but for the 2,707,421 
pesrons engaged in mechanical, manufacturing, and mining pursuits. 
Commerce, with its light-houses, harbors, breakwaters, buoys, coast- 
surveys, and naval protection, has sometimes absorbed more in a single 
year than all that for eighty years has been done and all that it is now 
for coming ages proposed to do for agriculture. 

I begrudge nothing to commerce ; but agriculture and the mechanic 
arts deserve a more liberal recognition, and those employed in these 
pursuits, as worthy as the worthiest, can have but little respect or ten- 
derness for any fallacies or grim humors brought forth to exclude 
their claims. The grand extent and dignity of agriculture cannot be 
safely or wisely ignored by any men or any parties in America, where 
it is probable that more real farms- are owned, and practically worked 
by the owners, than in all of Europe. Tradesmen may fail, com- 
merce may suffer shipwreck, railroads may bring their owners and 
creditors to grief, banks may stop payment, but the farmers never 
stop ; they face all vicissitudes of trade and of adverse seasons, face 
even sneering neglect, and, standing to their noble but unambitious 
calling, are never less than the backbone of the State. Though the 
world turns round, though the flood comes and the winds blow, every 
farmer, planted on the deep foundations of his own homestead, feels 
that beyond all peradventure this is mine. 

IMPORTANCE OF SKILLED LABOR. 

Perhaps there are few questions of higher moment than the future 
of our industrial and mechanical trades. The throng of foreign arti- 
sans and mechanics annually coming to our shores are eager for places 
at the head, and our own men must be made superior, or at least equal 
in skill, or they may be driven from their employments, and perhaps 
from their homes. In many departments of industry the longer ex- 



17 

perience of Europe, and more regular apprenticeship, gives to their 
best workmen some rather formidable advantages. This, with the 
imported barbarous despotism reigning over our " trades unions," re- 
stricting the number of apprentices among the masters, not unlike* 
the tyranny of wild horses, which kill off male colts, is tending to 
cripple the progressive growth of native mechanics, and the number 
of young men now seeking to learn trades is unnaturally circum- 
scribed. The only remedy for this is a higher standard of technical 
Education for our own workmen, who should, with all their inborn 
aptitudes fully developed, everywhere aim to be the best, and no 
more be outstripped in the quality of their work than they are in the 
quantity. 

A BENEFIT TO ALL OTHER COLLEGES. 

A general advance in the scholarship of farmers and mechanics, of 
merchants and manufacturers, or of the population at large, cannot 
prove detrimental to men in the so-called, learned professions or to 
literary colleges. All these would be stimulated beyond a doubt to 
make a greater advance and take up a higher position than that now 
held, as there is indefinite room ; but this should be hailed as a high 
recommendation, one of the exalted benefits to accrue from the estab- 
lishment of the national colleges, and could not be construed as in- 
compatible with the standing and prosperity of existing literary insti- 
tutions. If any officers among the latter should anywhere exhibit 
skepticism and exceptional jealousy respecting a higher education 
for the industrial population, as very few have done and less will do, 
it would justify the charge, not entirely new, that they are too much 
actuated by either monastic or aristocratic bigotry, and deserve pity 
for their palpable lack of sympathy with popular institutions. I feel 
sure that no true American will ever prize his own education higher 
because there maybe others who cannot get it; and the purpose here 
is to increase the usefulness of the colleges Ave have created, not the 
demolition of the old. 

AMERICAN INVENTIONS. 

Among the conspicuous evidences of comparative intellectual and 
industrial activity of the people of different States may be reckoned 
their inventive power, as exhibited by the number of original patents 
annually obtained for new and useful inventions. These require elab- 
orate thought, intricate and dexterous combination of ideas, and the 
practical application of scientific principles. Wherever enlightened 
and active industry prevails, the people will be found to have a de- 
cided aptitude for devising and constructing labor-saving instrumen- 
talities — confirming Franklin's humorous definition of man as "an an- 
imal who makes tools " — though not so much for the object of saving 
labor as for increasing the rapidity of production and improving the 
quality of the product. It is the triumph of brain-power, which 
once put in motion by schools and colleges never stops, but keeps on 
to the end of life. One success is an incitement to fresh ventures and 
the inspiration which leads others to kindred efforts. Perhaps we have 
no reason to be dissatisfied with our present record when contrasted 
with that of other nations, as it will show four times the number of 
patents annually issued compared with Great Britain, notwitstand- 
ing that no applicant there is refused, questions of interference being 
left to the courts, while here nearly one-third are rejected for reasons 
of conflict, lack of priority, or inutility. It is even possible that we 
are as widely known abroad for our Yankee inventions as for any- 
thing else. 

2 M 



18 

The State of Michigan, largely agricultural, is young and vigorous, 
just out of its teens, and yet in 1873 there were 356 inventors, or one 
annually to every 3,326 of her people; hut South Carolina, one of the 
<bld "thirteen," unfortunately deficient in schools and colleges, had 
only 25, or one to every 28,224 of her people. The State of Connec- 
ticut, crowded with manufactures and the mechanic arts, leads off 
in the same year with 622 inventors, or one to every 864 of her peo- 
ple; while in New Mexico, nearly barren of educational institutions, 
there was only one patent issued among a population of over 91,000. 
Michigan and Connecticut are blest, not only with the best system 
of common schools, but with higher institutions of learning among 
the foremost in the land. These States stand in the front rank as to 
wealth and education, and there can hardly be a better illustration 
of the fact than the number of patents annually won by their people. 
They are constantly surprising their contemporaries by something 
new, that will lighten labor and benefit the world. 

Patents were first devised to secure titles of nobility, but when they 
were at length used to secure the titles of the inventors to the cut- 
nail machine, the American reaper, the sewing-machine, and the elec- 
tric telegraph, they were used for a far nobler purpose. Here are 
titles of nobility, not incompatible with republican institutions, but 
adorning and giving luster to the pedigree of the humblest citizen. 

" The nation most quickly promoting the intellectual development 
of its industrial population," says Justus Liebig, "must advance, as 
surely as the country neglecting it must inevitably retrograde." 

The world is beginning to comprehend this profound truth. The 
vaunting of our superiority over what we esteem the less favored por- 
tions of mankind, while they are steadily advancing, will beget a 
complacent stand-still policy, and too late we may rind that we have 
much to learn, as we found at the London exhibition, as the British 
found at the Paris exposition, and as the French found while held by 
the mailed hand of better-educated Prussia. 

THE CENTENNIAL. 

Our Centennial will truly exhibit a young nation of wonderful 
promise, but the disclosure of deficiencies sure to occur — when we shall 
" see ourselves as others see us " — will be a lesson not least to be prized 
if it shall cure the small amount of conceit to which in our modest 
moods we sometimes slyly and reluctantly confess. Of course we 
can " whip all creation," nevertheless it may not be well to challenge 
such a strain oftener than centennially. Modern civilization, the 
arts, trade, and commerce, bring out the relative value of the masses, 
and nations no longer conquer and are no longer judged by the brill- 
iant career of a single successful leader. The combined power of 
the people, their aggregate force and their general intelligence, gives 
the chief luster to and mainly determines the destiny of nations. The 
power of educated force and skill is pre-eminently the great gift to 
man, and brings in its train not only intellectual wealth but material 
and political independence. It does not attempt to " cut blocks with 
a razor," nor to fit round holes with square plugs. Why do we at so 
much cost open many mines only to find at last* r nothing to show 
but a hole in the ground ? More special previous training might pre- 
clude this not uncommon grief. Why are so many of our railroads 
non-paying investments ? Largely because they have been unscien- 
tifically located, and then built not only prematurely, or in advance 
of any business support, but with a lavish disregard of expenditure. 
It has been computed that not less than several hundred millions of 



19 

dollars have been lost in the United States by inferior and faulty rail- 
road engineering. Certainly the over $4,000,000,000 invested is now 
barely worth half the cost. Germany, far better educated in this 
respect, obtains large revenues from railroads, and constructs them 
more scientifically, and even with a praiseworthy parsimony, as we 
might have done, if national colleges in every State had furnished 
engineers with the appropriate training. In the time of Plato, as he 
says, " you could buy a common builder for five or six minae at most, 
but for a master-workman not even for ten thousand drachmae, for 
there are few of them even among all the Greeks." That is to say, 
the master-workman was then worth twenty times the price of a com- 
mon laborer. There and here men are no longer slaves, but the dif- 
ference in their personal valuation has not diminished by lapse of 
time. 

EDUCATED MEN. 

But beyond the calculation of mere dollars and cents, it may be 
regarded as an axiom that where the masses are educated, there will 
be a nation of patriots, strongly devoted to the principles of civil 
liberty and observant of the laws of a stable government. Such men 
build' up and .do not tear down. One thoroughly educated man exerts 
an influence over an entire neighborhood, sometimes throughout the 
state and nation ; but the influence of a well-directed college is much 
more extensive and much more permanent. The latter is a perennial 
fountain, always pouring forth a living stream of moral and intel- 
lectual missionaries. Generation after generation may pass away, 
but the college never dies. Our national colleges, fitted for their 
work, are not servile copies of previously existing institutions, whether 
at home or abroad ; but, though different, are intended to be in the 
progress of time not inferior in character and completeness to any in 
the world — capable of a continuous and healthy growth, and in en- 
tire harmony with the wants and sentiments of the American people 
and of the age. They will tend to produce unity, amity, and equality 
among States widely separated, but going hand in hand to the end of 
time. They will make a perpetual contribution to the political 
strength and the intellectual stamina of our country, which is to be 
forever governed by the people ; and the great question now to be 
solved is whether it shall be well governed by an educated, vigorous, 
and virtuous people, or be dragged down by the preponderance of 
illiterate and blundering imbecility, as theconspicuous wreck of the 
last vain hopeof mankind. 

TEACHERS. 

It has been conceded by nearly all of the profoundest thinkers 
upon the subject that the speediest way to promote general education 
is first to establish institutions where the highest and most thorough 
culture can be obtained, as a true standard of excellence, and in order 
to furnish the best tools for future work, or to supply a full corps of 
competent teachers for the preparatory and common schools. Ex- 
penditures to sustain incompetent teachers are not only a positive 
waste of money but an irreparable waste of time on the part of 
scholars. We are young but once, and, if untaught or ill-taught then, 
few will wonder or lament if our dust shall steal in silence to the 
"tombs of short memories." The old English proverb ran, " It is as 
good to be unborn as unbred." 

In all of the States there is a great want of thoroughly qualified 
teachers. The poorly qualified so largely outnumber the better sort 
and so largely underbid in the matter of wages that they have brought 



20 

discredit upon the profession. Competent teachers, who should he 
retained for life, shun the ridicule heaped upon the whole class of tem- 
porary pedagogues and jump out of the profession at the first oppor- 
tunity. Elevate the whole class and there will arise an esprit de corps 
that will permanently protect its own reputation. 

This want of proper teachers is not only very conspicuous in the 
Southern States, and so to continue until an indigenous supply can be 
provided, but the want pervades all of the Northern States, appa- 
rently becoming year by year more aggravated, and only populous 
cities and large towns now secure the best class of teachers. The 
rural districts for the most part maintain school-mistresses, who 
quickly manage " to step down and out" by getting married, and but 
a few of the sex of which Dominie Sampson and Ichabod^Crane were 
such shining ornaments. 

In the message of the governor* of Pennsylvania of January, 1874, 
we have the " startling declaration" that 15,003 persons in that great 
and prosperous Commonwealth received certificates as teachers in 
common schools, but only 374 of this multitude " were found to have 
a thorough knowledge of reading, writing, arithmetic, geography, and 
grammar." Certainly that State is not alone deficient or in danger 
of falling into the ditch by em/ploying the blind to lead the blind. 

If good teachers are sadly needed in Northern States, are there not 
abundant reasons to suppose that they may be needed elsewhere ? 

The national colleges in the Southern States are thus far sending 
out a very large part of all their graduates as teachers. There is a 
constantly increasing demand for them, and, being mostly to the 
"manner bom," they escape the jealousy to which teachers from dis- 
tant States have often been and long will be subjected. These col- 
leges will assuredly make large additions to the stock of thoroughly- 
trained educators, and those that are incompetent are always unat- 
tractive and profitless to the pupils most in need. If there were no 
other work for national colleges, here is enough and sufficiently im- 
portant to repay all of their present and prospective cost. It is mani- 
festly an indispensable prerequisite to the foundation and maintenance 
of common schools that a regular army of proper teachers, more than 
one lesson in advance of the pupils, should first be created and com- 
posed of those who will be most in harmony with our civilization, 
life, and Government. 

NO JEALOUSY AMONG INSTITUTIONS OF LEARNING. 

The national colleges, unlike some other more favored institutions, 
have not been so enriched by endowments as to be made too proud to 
ask for more, nor are they so envious of the prosperity of others as 
to view with alarm efforts made to multiply American institutions of 
learning, or to make them stronger and of greater utility. They are 
young, scarcely half -fledged, and confess their immaturity ; but they 
start at a time when most needed, and, young as they are, show that 
they are beginning a work of great magnitude, truly American in 
character, which has not been done and will not be done without 
their assistance. They modestly but firmly stand on their own merits, 
interfering with nobody, except to offer a liberal education, not too 
greatly encumbered by old traditions, and abreast with the advance 
of the present times, that will be accepted by many instead of by a 
few, to whom it will be more available because tendered at less cost, 
and better because of more flexibility with reference to their taste, 

* Annual message of Governor Hartranft. 



21 

"habits, and position in life. A leading object has been and will be to 
reach out and to include more of those, to be gathered nowhere else, 
who can be made of greater value to their country through a higher 
development of their natural faculties, by bringing out the gold that 
is in them as well as the iron. 

With an institution of this kind in each State, all the local wants, 
however various and widely apart, can be wisely studied and pro- 
vided for, and many young men will obtain near at home a sound 
mental training who might otherwise never have been prompted to 
make the necessary effort, or, if prompted, might not have been able 
to afford the expenditure and loss which would be involved in its 
pursuit by a' deduction of four years from remunerative industry, in- 
cluding also a costly pilgrimage to more distant and expensive estab- 
lishments. Having an opportunity to acquire an education which 
will plant the foundations that serve to some extent to support pur- 
suits or professions previously chosen, they will not be driveu at the 
last moment to choose abruptly a profession to fit their education. 

Some of the time-honored literary institutions, needing nothing, ask 
nothing for themselves, and it would be passing strange if they should 
complain of any Government favor to others. Far above the reach 
of rivalry, grandly subsidized by private endowments, and encour- 
aged by the loyal support of their ever-swarming alumni, it cannot 
be supposed they would foreclose and deny everywhere to others all 
support, and, " like an Eastern despot," to use the words of Bacon, 
" strangle their rivals in order to reign peaceably." 

If the Government, however, is to do anything, it cannot attempt 
indiscriminate aid, and certainly need not help those in no want of 
help, but must make its selection so as to benefit the largest and most 
meritorious numbers among the industrial classes who fail to find 
existing and accessible institutions adapted to their special wants. 
The proposed grant will place no national college upon an equal 
footing with many of those which are already rich, and which it is 
to be hoped will be too proud and too generous to exhibit any jeal- 
ousy of the prosperity of others ; for, with their troops of active friends 
already organized, even when any calamity overtakes them it only 
foreshadows a larger measure of prosperity, or proves the signal of 
fresh bounties from those who seem more ready to give than are the 
afflicted to ask. 

But can a few literary institutions, renowned and opulent as they 
may be, with all other similar but less favored institutions following 
with unequal steps in their wake, do the educational work of Texas, 
of Kansas, of Mississippi and North Carolina, as well as of all the 
•other States ? In all or nearly all of the old literary colleges, as has 
been shown, they have but 25,010 students, of whom less than one- 
fourth graduate annually ; and thus they turn out not many more 
than five thousand educated young men annually for the whole of 
our forty-six States and Territories, or not enough to furnish one in 
ten of the civil service of the United States. Can that be considered 
adequate to the full requirements of 44,000,000 of people, having an 
'annual increase of males alone of not less than 500,000 ? On the con- 
trary, it is furnishing a sadly inadequate equipment. One thoroughly 
educated boy in a thousand is not enough. It will not leaven the 
whole lump. We require the seeds of a more advanced educational 
culture to be planted where they will grow and ultimately be diffused 
over all parts of the land, leaving no Boeotian deserts, and, when dif- 
fused, that the benefit shall accrue to all classes of the community 
and even to the land itself. 

No well-established institution fears to be outrun, nor will any one 



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22 

attempt to monopolize the whole work of higher education or seek 
to stand as a central luminary in whose presence all others must " pale 
their ineffectual fire." Education as a monopoly would be the direst 
and most odious of all monopolies. But a broad, and popular system 
should disseminate more universally a higher as well as a common- 
i school education in each and every State. No portion of our country 
\should be left as a possible future wilderness of ignorance. Seats of 
ample learning on one edge only of the Republic would be like a 
beautiful garden on one side of an immense estate with all of the re- 
mainder left barren and desolate or thick set with weeds and bram- 
bles, f Men trained and fitted for any and every duty must be grown 
and ripened in the localities where wanted in order that, whenever 
a first-class man of science or learning seems to be required in any 
vocation or position, no State shall be found deficient and be com- 
pelled to submit to the weak and uncertain dependenence of trans- 
planting the unemployed surplus, the cheapest floating stock of more 
distant regions.^ American States, unlike those of ancient Greece, 
will ever be reluctant to send to Sparta for commanders. 

CONCLUSION. 

No Senator ever speaks without some impression, more or less pro- 
found, of the importance of his subject. If I have erred in this esti- 
mate by trespassing so long upon the patience of the Senate, I crave 
that charity which others may need when embarrassed by the diver- 
sity and abundance of the facts and details to be submitted. I have 
endeavored to point out — 

First. That the fund to arise from all sales of public lands must here- 
after be very inconsiderable. Whatever the extent of the public do- 
mains may be, it is growing less year by year, and the homestead de- 
mands, by foreign immigrants and by the hundreds of thousands of 
American citizens annually arriving at their majority, are steadily 
increasing. Surely the small driblets remaining to be actually sold 
ought to be consecrated, in accordance with the conditions set forth 
in our title deeds, to " schools and the means of education " for the 
permanent and universal benefit of the people. 

Second. That more aid to common schools of a better type is needed 
in every quarter of our Union and that it is much wiser to give to youth 
assurance and f aithin a higher lif e a than to provide dungeons for man- 
hood. 

Third. That the number of those who are' being thoroughly edu- 
cated is disproportionately small, and that colleges to which many 
more of all the industrial classes might resort are not only vitally im- 
portant but are loudly demanded by all those who do not hold an 
education to be a baneful luxury from which all the indigent and in- 
dustrious, as so many born dunces, are to be excluded in the lump. 

Fourth. That, while it is not proposed to divert any funds from 
the Treasury that will not yield a fourfold return, the objects aimed 
at are more precious than gold or silver, and a higher and more uni- 
versal education will yoke neither the people nor the Treasury with 
poverty. 

Finally, may I not invoke favor to such legislation as not infre- 
quently makes men better than the law, that will tend to kindle 
a national passion to have Americans as a whole become the best edu- 
cated of any people in the world, that will attach them more ardently 
to a free government than to any other known to mankind, that will 
inspire some ambition to excel in the arts of peace as well as in the 
arts of war, and bring forth that wisdom which gives security and 
progress to society, and which may serve to make our native land and 
its ever-increasing millions of people eminent in the future annals of 
time for all the virtues required to adorn character or race among the 
nations of the earth ? 



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